Iran confirms enriches uranium to low level

TEHRAN, Apr 11 (Reuters) The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation confirmed today that Iran had enriched uranium to a level used in nuclear power plants.

''I am proud to announce that we have started enriching uranium to the 3.5 per cent level,'' Gholamreza Aghazadeh said in a televised address, adding that the pilot enrichment plant in Natanz, south of Tehran, had started working yesterday.

Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had earlier told Iran Kuwait's KUNA news agency that Iran was producing enriched uranium from 164 centrifuges, a move that will anger the United Nations and the West which have demanded that Iran halt its enrichment activities.

''This great achievement shows that resistance against illegal demands from others can pave the way for greater achievements,'' Aghazadeh said.

The West accuses Iran of seeking to make atomic weapons.

Iran says it nuclear programme is purely civilian.

Uranium enriched to a low level can be used as fuel to generate electricity. Fuel for use in Iran's only nuclear plant now under construction would need to be enriched to 3.5 percent.

Uranium must be enriched to far higher levels for bomb-making.

''This achievement (of producing fuel) has paved the way for Iran to start its industrial-scale production and, to enter this stage, we are trying to put in operation a complex of 3,000 centrifuges by the end of the end of this (Iranian) year,'' Aghazadeh said. The Iranian year ends in March 2007.

An IAEA report in March said Iran had begun vacuum-testing a cascade of 20 centrifuges and had begun substantial renovations of its system for handling uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas at its Natanz enrichment facility.

Tehran also told the IAEA it would start installing the first 3,000 of a planned 50,000 centrifuges in the fourth quarter of 2006, an IAEA report said.

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